Unfortunately, in many areas, such as in my state, most of those underprivileged little bastards have no intention of learning, bring weapons to school, and steal and vandalize on every chance they can.

I am very much in favor of students with high I.Q.s to be given the chance to excel in education and land higher paying jobs. This is why I am also in favor of chartered schools -- free public schools that offer higher quality classes but at the same time have much higher standards for acceptance.

My high school was affiliated with a technical center where students could choose to take classes learning practical skills, while still earning high school credit. Not everybody is an academic and bound for college, yet the vast majority of public schools are trying to force students into this one mold. Many high school students realize this, and would rather be little hellions than waste their time taking classes that are no good to them.

Allowing students to choose between an academic and a practical education is one way to improve the education system. I would probably have turned out to be just another shitstain if I didn't go to such a good school. The quality of education sets a limit on the quality of an individual, except for those with incredible talent and ambition.

Allowing students to choose between an academic and a practical education is one way to improve the education system.

Yes, I can agree with this. After all, higher education is still a business, so forcing students into that one "mold" generates more tuition, more fees for textbooks, more financial aid loans, more interest and so on. A liberal arts degree is probably not the wisest choice for most young people to take in terms of becoming marketable.

Believe me, I was not born overly privileged. I had a part-time job all the way through senior year of high school. I had a lot of fun in college, but my degree has nothing to do with my present job. Even today I am still paying back on the last lingering amount of my financial aid debt!

In retrospect I wish I would have studied something more practical.

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"The difference between the man or woman who's a practicing Satanist, from an identity Satanist is that the practicing Satanist looks at the picture, while the identity Satanist studies the frame." -- Anton Szandor LaVey

"Anyone without a sense of humor is too pretentious to be a good magician." -- Anton Szandor LaVey

>> Again I say the cure for all the world's ills: Mandatory reversible sterilization at birth for every human on the planet. You then decide which country has the best "You can breed if..." laws. <<

But then that would be the government who decides the criteria. And the criteria would be work and taxes. The mandate for complete and utter slavery.

It seems to me that our blueprint for governments is fundamentally wrong.

But I don't know what the solution is. There will always be wastrels. Laziness is intrinsic to our species. Though people do need to feel some kind of success in order to be happy and balanced. I don't think the acquisition of money needs to be the sole arbiter of that.

As I have said, I completely understand the masses rejecting state slavery with every bone in their weasely little bodies.

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"u.v.ray blends the dark street poetry of Nelson Algren with the swagger and style of a young Iggy Pop."

>> Again I say the cure for all the world's ills: Mandatory reversible sterilization at birth for every human on the planet. You then decide which country has the best "You can breed if..." laws. <<

But then that would be the government who decides the criteria. And the criteria would be work and taxes. The mandate for complete and utter slavery.

It seems to me that our blueprint for governments is fundamentally wrong.

Ah, but you forget, my friend, that I am a complete American tool! I buy all that patriotic for the people crap, hook, line, and sinker.

...with a bit of a twist: We get the governement we ourselves fight for. I don't like all this going about spreading democracy. People who are ready for democracy will spill their own blood for it, not wait for it to be gotten for them. My country suffered through a revolution and a civil war to make a statement about what they wanted for a government, and perhaps some day it will happen again, but saying the government decides things is really just owning up to what we, collectively, allow. (yeah, that was a long winded sentency-lecture thing.)

Y~

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Magistra, Church of Satan/Autocrat of the Damned

>> saying the government decides things is really just owning up to what we, collectively, allow. <<

Indeed. Which is why so many don't allow the government to force them into a job.

It's all a game. Government is legalised extortion. And don't anyone go thinking if it weren't for the rats they'd take less taxes off us. Because they'd just find another excuse to extract it from its populace.

Of course, there was also an English civil war (1642 - 1651). As far as I can tell governments as we currently know them all end up the same. Like I say, I don't know a solution, but I do posit our blueprint for governments are currently flawed.

But it's not something I personally am willing to fight for. Not with my blood, at any rate. But there are other ways of fighting.

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"u.v.ray blends the dark street poetry of Nelson Algren with the swagger and style of a young Iggy Pop."

Man, do I wish growing up on welfare was really as awesome as everyone makes it out to be. That would have been amazing - a free ride, no concerns, never having to worry about being take care of - sounds so fantastic it's like a dream.

It is also a skewed, over-emotional, and unrealistic portrayal of welfare. The hard reality is that maintaining the basic necessities (food, clothing, shelter) when your margin of error is about 100 bucks a month means that you are constantly scrambling to make ends meet, always under threat of eviction and starvation, and never have enough surplus to even begin thinking about the future, must less saving for it, and making plans to improve. If your entire life has been spent trying to survive from week to week, the long term is not only inconceivable, it's also a big fucking tragic joke. It's the thing that politicians argue over, while the poor don't give a fuck, because they cannot even imagine it.

Yes, there are endemic problems with a welfare system. But eliminate it completely and you would not suddenly find the poor subclass scrambling to get jobs, you would instead have the poor subclass homeless and visible to you everyday, where you get to step over their shit in the street.

Welfare hides away the poor. It provides just barely enough not to be homeless.

Let me be clear: I am not saying welfare is good or bad, I am saying that how it is discussed almost always completely misses the mark of its reality.

Satanists are not required by the religion itself, or by the Church of Satan to endorse any particular political opinions, though many Satanists do hold political opinions. (If you haven't read High Priest Peter Gilmore's "Policy on Politics", I recommend you do, on the Church of Satan website.)

Satanists are adaptable pragmatists in everyday life, and in political positions.

Therefore, I may hold certain high-minded, fantastic ideals of how I'd LIKE the world to work, ("Everyone should be essentially self-sufficient, imaginative, and free-thinking, and take responsibility for themselves") but recognize that that's just not the way things are.

Some things will change some won't, but, thinking from how things are, my political opinions are pragmatic...say for example, that keeping large numbers of people alive in their own homes is preferable to violent dissatisfaction in the form of mobs on the streets.

Think about what the ACTUAL results of policies would be, rather than what you want them to be.

There is a seminal older book about Native Americans whose name/author I cannot recall, with a famous quote I'll try to get close.

In the book, a White guy is expressing envy over the "easy carefree" lifestyle Indians have on the reservation, surrounded by amazing natural beauty, not being bound by an office job, etc.

An Indian responds:

"Can you eat a rainbow, can you feed it to your hungry kids? Can you track down and butcher a sunset, put it on a plate with fine bloody juices, and make your wife happy? Can you fit a babbling brook into next weeks shopping list so your Grandmother doesn't starve"?

There is a seminal older book about Native Americans whose name/author I cannot recall, with a famous quote I'll try to get close.

In the book, a White guy is expressing envy over the "easy carefree" lifestyle Indians have on the reservation, surrounded by amazing natural beauty, not being bound by an office job, etc.

An Indian responds:

"Can you eat a rainbow, can you feed it to your hungry kids? Can you track down and butcher a sunset, put it on a plate with fine bloody juices, and make your wife happy? Can you fit a babbling brook into next weeks shopping list so your Grandmother doesn't starve"?

Something like that.

Grass, fence, greener.

Yes. But Red Indians are another example of a group that has played the victim card for years. Been bleating about their rights to leap through rainbows high on substances since the year dot.

And lo and behold when the white man comes offering to share food aplenty all they got was "white man speaks with forked tongue" and expressing a desire to scalp the proverbial hand that feeds them.

And now all this shit about how you can't eat a rainbow? No shit, Sherlock. Fuck em.

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"u.v.ray blends the dark street poetry of Nelson Algren with the swagger and style of a young Iggy Pop."

"Can you eat a rainbow, can you feed it to your hungry kids? Can you track down and butcher a sunset, put it on a plate with fine bloody juices, and make your wife happy? Can you fit a babbling brook into next weeks shopping list so your Grandmother doesn't starve"?

If that hasn't been rendered as a work of art, it should. I'd love to have the image in my head up on my wall. I'd do it myself, but my right brain doesn't work.

Man, do I wish growing up on welfare was really as awesome as everyone makes it out to be. That would have been amazing - a free ride, no concerns, never having to worry about being take care of - sounds so fantastic it's like a dream.

It is also a skewed, over-emotional, and unrealistic portrayal of welfare. The hard reality is that maintaining the basic necessities (food, clothing, shelter) when your margin of error is about 100 bucks a month means that you are constantly scrambling to make ends meet, always under threat of eviction and starvation, and never have enough surplus to even begin thinking about the future, must less saving for it, and making plans to improve. If your entire life has been spent trying to survive from week to week, the long term is not only inconceivable, it's also a big fucking tragic joke. It's the thing that politicians argue over, while the poor don't give a fuck, because they cannot even imagine it.

Yes, there are endemic problems with a welfare system. But eliminate it completely and you would not suddenly find the poor subclass scrambling to get jobs, you would instead have the poor subclass homeless and visible to you everyday, where you get to step over their shit in the street.

Welfare hides away the poor. It provides just barely enough not to be homeless.

Let me be clear: I am not saying welfare is good or bad, I am saying that how it is discussed almost always completely misses the mark of its reality.

You've highlighted quite clearly why it is I hate offhanded diatribes like the one Venator made.

It's really, really easy to sit up on a high horse and start issuing these decrees when you really have no scope of what happens in the real world. And the majority of people making these blanket statements, I often assume, have no real idea what is really going on in the lower echelons in society. They just assume that the only people receiving any kind of help are drug abusing scumbags.

I have been on the bottom before, seen others on the bottom, and sometimes it is their fault (and sometimes it has been my own) but often times a bad streak of luck can lead to the worst of situations. The dynamics of a broken family unit are pretty difficult to discern as well from just a cursory glance; my wife, who is one of the hardest working people I have ever met, was systematically beaten down for years by an abusive, emotionally disturbed mother, who pulled the entire family into a slum, both literally and figuratively. It would have been a real shame to see her, powerless to do anything at such a young age, simply be whisked away like a "rat" due to the mistakes of her parents.

I stand by the fact that, the only people bitching about the system are the people who are getting the raw end of it. Anyone who is truly successful doesn't have to worry about this kind of low level social business anyways, and the ones who pretend they have some idea of how it works and are unsympathetic usually have no idea what the fuck they are talking about. It's akin to people in the head office of a business who were hired from other venues rather than within the company systematically tearing the structure of their new business down because they fail to understand how things work at its lowest level due to a lack of any kind of tangible, hands on experience.

This whole discussion seems thoroughly retarded to me apart from the few always insightful posters who - not coincidentally - also happen to be members of the hierarchy. Funny how stratification also sheds light on perspective.

I also think anyone looking for MORE government intrusion on privacy and on our personal lives are really missing the full ramifications of what such a rigid system can lead too - and that, despite how fantastic and wonderful and intelligent and useful they think they are, are blinded to the risks that they might actually end up on the BOTTOM of such a system, and as a result, would be a victim of the type of oppressive bullshit it would allow for!

It's hard for me to take a solid position on anything political anymore because it all seems so fundamentally flawed in one way or another. I blame people for that, as usual. They suck.

Think about what the ACTUAL results of policies would be, rather than what you want them to be.

I'd like to amend my previous statement; members of the Hierarchy, and Labyrinthine. You are one poster whose opinions I really value here. You almost always have something insightful to say, and this quote nails it on the head in my opinion.